


A Song of Creation for Ikoria

by MoriartyElias



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Creation Myth, DEEPLY self-indulgent, Gen, Headcanon, Worldbuilding, bringing my own personal swing to how to construct a world, mostly on the basis of 'WoTC seems unlikely to put in the work of a creation myth for any plane', was looking too hard at the mythos cards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23604847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoriartyElias/pseuds/MoriartyElias
Summary: This is a story about the very beginning of change, the birth of an amazingly new and unfathomably old plane. This is the tale of Ikoria, and the mighty creatures that shaped it from the lightning at the beginning of the world. Because a world deserves that kind of care.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	A Song of Creation for Ikoria

Consciousness, formless and vast, with a desire to become a self. To become distinct, to become separate, to exist in a place and move in time. This is Ikoria, at the moment it begins. The Five spinning and merging and dancing apart, and here, they _spark_.

No, not in the way of the planeswalker, as the wilderness of Ikoria is such that even those so mighty as the ancient plane-shapers would not have survived in this first moment. In the way of a fire sparking from flint, consciousness divides, becomes, evolves, begins.

Five of them, but none pure. Ikoria is a dancing plane, and it began with a dance. These five have all touched parts of each other, each one of five holding three parts of a wheel. Strictly speaking, only two need survive.

But the two who realize that the wheel can be completed between the two of them behold the other three, who toil at the fire of consciousness and bring forth the masterwork of instinct, in perfect complement with the masterwork of enlightenment that the two have happened upon. The fullness of consciousness will only be preserved amongst the Five, and so the dance moves to its next step.

The Five are full of desire, and things strike themselves into being when one of the Five realizes that they desire it. Food and water, safety and challenge manifest fully formed at the urging of instinct. Beauty, wonder, fear and thrill spring forth from enlightenment. But there is no place and no time, and these things must begin in order to exist.

So let us begin, says the One to the Four. But there is nowhere to begin, says the One to the Four. But which of us has said this?, asks the One of the Four. Each of us knows ourselves but none of us know each other, says the One to the Four. Then we shall introduce ourselves, says the One to the Four.

They are Snapdax, Vadrok, Nethroi, Illuna, and Brokkos. They are the apex, the beginning. They begin and so does everything else.

Nethroi devours the firmament, the endless unshaped potential, and makes dirt from it. He laughs when the others ask him what he has made, and said that he did not know how to shape unmatched forces, but he understands dirt.

Dirt, says Nethroi, is the home. It is the hunting ground. It is the healing ground. It is the foundation. Dirt, says Nethroi, is the first creation.

And all are satisfied by this, and they take the dirt into their claws and begin to shape it.

Snapdax shapes the mind, the implementation of enlightenment and instinct. He drags long lines through the dirt and fills them with shaped dirt. But the shaping of dirt is a new craft, and so in his inexperience Snapdax has made the mind sharp and jagged and crackling with unrefined potential. He laughs when the others ask why he has made the mind this way.

The mind, says Snapdax, is a network. All selves must exist in balance, but a self alone would never see the need for balance. So the mind is laid out around the world, girdling it, chaining it and dictating the balance of things. As he explains, lightning crackles along the mind and continents take shape. Oceans and mountains and plains and forests are formed, and running all throughout them are the crystals, the new mind of the world. The mind, says Snapdax, is the second creation.

Illuna shapes the creatures, the pieces of this delicate balance which exists between selves. She makes a new shape with each creature, each tailor-made for a specific position in the balance. But the shaping of dirt is a new craft, and so in her inexperience Illuna has made the creatures soft and hollow so that when she puts them on the world, they bend into new shapes. She laughs when the others ask why she has made the creatures this way.

The creatures, says Illuna, are mutable. The balance must be able to change, to shift, but a tree does not yield as easily as a rock. So the creatures are made soft, changed by the world they live in and the creatures they live with, and hollow, so that new ideas from the mind can fill them and leave them as easily as possible. As she explains, the creatures dance together and spin and sing, and shape changes faster than thought. They are filled up by the lightning of the mind and it twists them harder than even the dance can move them. The creatures, says Illuna, are the third creation.

Brokkos shapes time, the wheel of progress upon which the world must turn if the balance can shift and change. He shapes it out of lightning, constant and overwhelming, because the Five began some time ago and so time must have existed outside of the world. He closes a claw around two parts of time, and makes stars, then he leans down to the world and looks for a creature. He sees a creature with very little room for instinct and plenty of room for enlightenment, who is still full of the lightning of instinct. He waits for the creature to make its attack, then he gives it the past and the future. He laughs when the others ask why he has made time this way.

Time, says Brokkos, is a universal concept that can be imparted from a single source. Anyone who realizes time can impart to others the existence of time far more easily than they can impart how to derive sustenance from meat. The balance exists because the two of us who discovered enlightenment waited for the three of us who discovered instinct, because we allowed for the possibility of change. If all the rest of the creatures will not wait for their fellow to join the dance, then they must be given something to help them stand apart in power rather than weakness. Time and humanity, says Brokkos, are the fourth and fifth creation.

Vadrok shapes the world, flying over it and baking the dirt into clay with the thundering fire of his roar. He does not waver in his flight, flying high enough to bake the tips of the mountains but not low enough to boil the water at the bottom of the oceans. He fuses the creatures harder, and one part of themselves refuses to change. He laughs when the others ask why he has made the world this way.

The world, says Vadrok, is the raw firmament shaped by consciousness. It was made from lightning into dirt, and now is shaped by lightning. Every choice, every change, must build upon a solid foundation, and if the whole world is soft then change will do nothing but move in a circle. Now each creature must approach its life from a unique perspective, and being channeled in a direction, will change in new and constructive ways. I have forged no speck of dirt to be the same, says Vadrok, and so all the creatures that walk upon them shall be in all ways different from each other. The beginning of things, says Vadrok, is the sixth creation.

And so the song ends, as creation has ceased and now existence becomes the goal. The Five watch the world spin and change and morph, endlessly adapting to itself. In time, they grow tired of watching.

We are hungry and want to hunt, say Snapdax and Vadrok.

They are tired and must be taught how to die, says Nethroi.

They are humble and must be taught how to hope, says Illuna.

I am bored and want to live, says Brokkos.

And so the Five reach out and set foot in the world. Where they step, they shape the dirt around themselves to make bodies, and let their minds reach out and race along the crystals.

And where they have touched the world and bent its laws one final time before bowing to them, their first footstep as mortals, the crystals morph and dance like water broken by a stone. An explosion in the mind of the world, a sharing of thoughts more ancient than the very thought of existence, until a tiny piece of the Five slept in every creature that lived.

The place where the crystals changed. It is a focal nexus, a fountain of thoughts and power that rises and falls in much the same way as broken water. When it springs forth, all the life of the world bleeds together into one, the one becoming two becoming four becoming seven, and when it recedes the connection of the mind is weakest, and all are separate.

The world is held within a circle of chains, a crystal network that crackles with all the wisdom and power of history itself. The world is moved within a circle, future becoming past and the crystals rising and falling. And into this circle are bound the humans, who can remember when things were different and plan for when things will be different again.

And so the world turns from era to era, and we seek to take hold of the circles that the beasts have drawn around us. And so the world turns, and life turns around it.

**Author's Note:**

> if i tell you the weed only kicked in halfway through writing you would not believe me


End file.
